Nils C. Kumkar studied sociology and economics in Göttingen and spent a year abroad at UCLA. In 2016, he completed his doctorate at the Leipzig DFG Research Training Group “Critical Junctures of Globalization” with a thesis on crisis protests in the USA and Germany. Since 2016, he has been a research associate at SOCIUM in Bremen, where he researches and publishes on political conflict, social inequality, digitalization, alternative facts, and conspiracy theories.

During his fellowship at the Thomas Mann House, Nils C. Kumkar is investigating conspiracy theories as a specific practice of drawing boundaries in seemingly unlimited communication spaces. He takes a look at how conspiracy theories structure the political discourse on both sides of the Atlantic.


Selected Awards

2012–2015 | DFG-funded doctoral studies as part of the Research Training Group “Fracture Zones of Globalization/Critical Junctures of Globalization” at the Centre for Area Studies at Leipzig University
2007–2008 | DAAD scholarship for an exchange year at UCLA
2005–2010 | Scholarship of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation


Selected Publications

2022 | Alternative Fakten: Zur Praxis der kommunikativen Erkenntnisverweigerung. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
2021 | with Uwe Schimank: “Drei-Klassen-Gesellschaft? Bruch? Konfrontation? Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Andreas Reckwitz’ Diagnose der Spätmoderne,“ Leviathan 49, no. 1, 7–32.
2018 | The Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and the Great Recession. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave.